Is Religion Worth It?

Philosophy Forums Religion and Spirituality
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Dawkins has talked about how religion may be the by-product of beneficial adaptations, such as imagination and respect for elders; religion may be a spandrel. If that’s the case, then the evolutionary appeal I made earlier is indeed a nonstarter.

Xunzian, if I understand you, you’re saying that there is no principle that says that believing a falsity is worse than believing a truth, and it is an empirical matter whether a specific falsity is more useful than a specific truth. Is that right?
It seems HumeGotItRight is making a more principled argument, or at least his position is more absolute:

Stumps, I think Hitler, Bin Laden, the Spanish Inquisition, and similar large-scale attrocities are more the exception than the rule, for both religion and irreligion; they are exceptionally terrible. Isn’t it more useful to look at the small actions? It seems likely to me that religion is more operative on the low level, on things like how to vote on an issue. Those small actions can make large differences society wide.

I don’t understand the relevance of the question about spitting in a monk’s face. The issue here is whether it would be better, given religion’s falsity, that no one spent their time as a monk. I don’t see how people act towards monks without that given relates. But, in anticipation of being told how it relates, I’ll answer: No, I wouldn’t spit in their face, but depending on the situation I might engage them in a philosophical discussion and try to convince them to give up their religion.

Religion is also that which proposes a spiritual. It is not just an extension of ourselves, because it proposes the existence of things, things which often conflict from one religion to the next: many gods or one, heaven or no, hell or no, souls or no, etc. etc.
Oughtist, that statement applies to you as well. It’s more than tree vs. ki. It’s tree vs. no tree. It can’t be that people who say ‘God exists’ and those who say ‘God does not exist’ are saying the same thing, because the actions that follow from the statements are totally different. There are actual conflicts between religious stances. They may all eminated from a similar quest, but they are not the same answer.

Omar, the practical problems with stripping the world of religion are certainly great. To say the least, we’ll just never ‘proove’ that religions are purely myths. We haven’t ‘prooved’ it about greek myths, people just stopped treating them as more than myths. I suppose that it is a fair response to arguments like those from MadManP to say that religion shouldn’t be eliminated because the process of eliminating it would be too painful and cause too much harm.
But I’m more interested in an even more hypothetical question: if we could snap our fingers and replace religion in people’s hearts and minds with some other belief system, should we? Or, is there even a belief system which can supply all that religion supplies to people?

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What exactly do we mean by “religion” anyway? I’ve been wondering how we’re defining it. I mean, I always, always wonder that.

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The title of a Manic Street Preachers album comes to mind, ‘This Is My Truth Tell Me Yours’. What is ‘truth’ apart from what we believe it to be? So no there is no real principle that states believe a truth is better than believe a falsity. The principle should be that there is harm in believing an irrational truth, such as the world is flat or God. The reason for my above quote is that religion claims to be infallable in its truths, which out any proof to back it up. I’d have much less beef with religion if it admitted it might be wrong!

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I assume that Carleas means mainstream organised religion, but I suppose you could define it as anything that answers the question, “How should I life my live?” or more ultimately, “What is the meaning of life?”*

*And no 42 doesn’t count!

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I think he said that all religion is fiction? I think. Anyway, doesn’t your definition make anti-religion a religion? i.e. you shouldn’t believe in superstitions?

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More than likely! I think a ‘religion’ though has to be widespread. I doubt every Catholic in the world has the same religion yet they are all the same religion. Theres a difference between a personal religion and an organised religion.

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God damn it, Anon. You had to take it there.
Religion is difficult to define in any situation, and particularly difficult to define here. How about this: Any belief system which acknowledges the existence of anything whose existence is not acknowledges by modern mainstream science. That’s a terrible definition in general, but here it works only because of the way the question is framed. Science can be broadly considered a quest to investigate the things that can be objectively shown to exist, so religion under this definition would entail belief in things that cannot be objectively shown to exist, and so the question becomes:
Is it ever beneficial to believe in things that cannot be objectively shown to exist, and which are in fact false.

Hume, are you denying objective reality? If by truth, you mean one’s interpretation of objective reality, that’s all well and good, but if that’s the case then truths can be compared insofar as they produce actions, i.e. if my interpretation produces objectively better results than yours, then mine is objectively better.
Traditional Chinese Medicine and Western Medicine are two interpretations of how to deal with ailments of the human body, but qi healing produces no discernable benefit in curing diseases, penicilin does. Both offer a prediction about the result of a therapy. One predicts the outcome better, enabling better treatment. When we compare the truth of TCM with that of WM, we can say which is more true.

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Exist how?

Depends on the ailment. TCM offers far superior advice concerning general health in my experience. For a broken bone though I’d definitely go to the doctor and get it fixed. Whatever works. “Qi healing produces no discernable benefit” is a false statement if it implies that it is always and necessarily true - I know this personally for a fact. “Penicilin does” is wrong, if it implies that it is always and necessarily true.

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Not as far as I’m aware, but I often say things without thinking them through…

I think we can safely say WM achieves its results better than TCM. But yet TCM still prevails in many areas. Why so? Because people believe in it. Actually your example is another good case of certain beliefs causing harm. The benefits of WM are well documented and widely available knowledge, but yet the people who practice TCM are propagating their treatments as better with no proof of this claim. Tradition is followed because that is what is taught. Old wives tales in our society are similar. (Actually thinking about it, it’s probably more likely that TCM prevails because of the lack of alternatives but still you get the jist of my point)

I think we can compare truths in how the perform against reality. But that also depends on what you are looking for in terms of results. What I would advocate is that we recognise that all our beliefs are not infallable and may be wrong. We each choose our beliefs based on what we are looking for, and how a given set of beliefs match these standards. The problems occur when we are taught that a certain set of beliefs, usually religion, are correct.

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Hello Carleas:

— Omar, the practical problems with stripping the world of religion are certainly great. To say the least, we’ll just never ‘proove’ that religions are purely myths. We haven’t ‘prooved’ it about greek myths, people just stopped treating them as more than myths. I suppose that it is a fair response to arguments like those from MadManP to say that religion shouldn’t be eliminated because the process of eliminating it would be too painful and cause too much harm.
O- Besides the practicality of the idea I was trying to address the desirability of such enterprise. You take it as a given that religion is false. I’ll meet you that far. But life is full of benevolent falsehoods, such as love and monogamy. So it is not just that the whole enterprise to “strip” religion is too great but perhaps detrimental to human life. You see it at best as a social lubricant but religion has a wider effect if you ask me.
There is a difference between what Christianity has become and what greek religion used to be, as well as what Christianity itself used to be. But at their height, Aristotle in the greek tradition and perhaps Deism and Monism in the West, you see complex ideas that do not resemble either the story of Genesis, nor the Theogony. People began to treat myths as myths because the fundamental ideas/themes behind the myths were elevated by the encounter with philosophy, which impel the religions into new understandings, narrations and interpretations of themselves.

— But I’m more interested in an even more hypothetical question: if we could snap our fingers and replace religion in people’s hearts and minds with some other belief system, should we? Or, is there even a belief system which can supply all that religion supplies to people?
O- 1) Depends on what “other” belief you’re talking about. I already know the consequences of religion and so I can prepare and protect myself from it’s excessess. But you have this “other” which we just would not be able to know, other than by further experience, what it’s dangers are or will be. At that point we ought to judge which is more of a threat and whether we are better off we the bad we know than with the worst we don’t know.
2) Again, that is a question you may attempt to answer. I am not in the bussiness of advancing “other” pseudo-religions. But don’t let my answers seem like aversions to the subject. First we must define religion: What it it? And try not to simply run to page XXX on a Richard Dawkins book to find that answer, but attempt to be more sympathetic in our definition. And I add this nuance: Even if such a “replacement” could exist, why should we expect it to be any different from all available religions? There is perhaps something in humans, a virtue or vice that channels religions down similar paths. We, perhaps, show an affinity to mytho-poetic narratives of control and this leads us to available religions or spur us to create similar religions. If God did not exist, said the enlightened, it would be necessary to invent Him. This agenda to replace religion has already been attempted in Russia, with results that I would not care to repeat. The substitution was not a revolution but a reformation.

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And another thing…
That definition is weak and partial to science which to me requires a leap of faith that is the thing we are criticising. You display a confidence in goods that science itself does not guarantee, such as it’s pursuit of objective knowledge. Science pursues knowledge but very often it does not present us with one monolith interpretation of reality but two and maybe more, especially when we reach in parts beyond objective observation, in which science and religion in fact find common ground. A reading of Genesis is not incompatible with a short narration of the birth of the universe (Big Bang) and the evolution of life. In fact the Catholic Church does not rule out evolutionary theory as american protestants try to do.
Second of all, you present science as a true opponent of religion when in fact it is it’s bastard child and the sublimination of the religion under the guidance of ascetics. Science has a legacy that leads back to monks as much as it leads to atheist, and even today many scientists are not in all case without a religion.

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They are the exception; true.
They also exist; that was only the point.
They are easy examples of man not needing religion to do horrible things.
Likewise, men can do great things without religion.

This is why I said that it does not matter what weapon you give a dangerous man, and it does not matter what gift a good man brings.
Neither the weapon or the gift will change what the man is.

What goes into a man is of no concern; even religion.
What comes out of a man may defile him or praise him.

The ebb and tide of politics will swing regardless like the breathing of a living creature.
Removing religion only removes a scent that it breathes.

When faced with monks of any religion, most people tend to extend respect.
Even if they heavily disagree.
They do not attack them.

They may try to have a conversation, as you would, but they will respect them for their devotion and for their mastery of their self.

This is one of many answers to the question, “Is Religion Worth It?”
If you want an immediate example of what Religion does, examine this; that no one good brings harm to a monk.
Examine too; no one good brings harm to a child.

This is where the tree and ki are; not later as you attach them.

They are not saying the same thing.

Regardless; use philosophy, use religion; use either and you are pursuing the same thing.
Under different names, concepts, and perspectives.

The Russian Orthodox swing incense in ritual robes while speaking in Latin as the congregation kneels and stands constantly in perfect tradition; meanwhile, the Lutheran’s have churches where the entire worship service is the whole congregation meditating and praying in silence in hopes of unifying their spirits together and together as a union with God.

These two actions of these two groups are totally different, and yet they both are pursuing the same religious end.

Actions do not separate man from pursuing the same ends.
Not all men are interested in the pursuit, I’m not intending to suggest that all are.

However, remove religion and man will still seek it and recreate it.
Remove philosophy and man will still seek it and recreate it.

There is no same answer, because there is no same man.

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It might equally be supposed, though, that the “spiritual” is that which induces religion.

In what I was suggesting by saying “perhaps God is not called God”, I meant to indicate that while we may currently think matters in terms of our being sufficiently developmentally advanced to be able to pronounce the falsity of religion, we may nonetheless still be in the position of needing to have some means of acknowledging that the spiritual nonetheless lingers… and that until we (Science) are able sufficiently to name the mechanism by which to experience/relate that dimension on a mass level, then religion quite arguably retains its worth, perhaps…

I would argue that “we” (i.e. an historically significant number of “us” (potentially including even back-hills Pakistanis, though much more subtlely, of course)) have the advantage of living in a time when freedom to (dis)believe is not only epistemologically possible but politically actual. And the advantage isn’t simply the matter of freedom to do so, but of living in such a time, i.e. needing to employ our collective brains in a wider way.

So, religion retains its worth within the dynamics of an historical dialogue heretofore impossible to witness. Its worth is, perhaps, then, precisely that of “stifling our search for truth”… it may well be that we can’t yet handle the truth, if truth there even is… :confused:

Perhaps the worth of Science involves some form of a corollary to that. And as has become the norm, the worth of Philosophy is stuck in the middle… nominally seeking to rename God.

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In the scientific sense, whatever that may be. It will probably be some sort of functional definition, such that something ‘exists’ if it affects a prediction equation, and only if the consequences of the belief that ‘something exists’ lead to correct predictions.
But I think you’re splitting hairs. It’s probably more productive to take the question backwards: instead of defining religion, assuming it’s false/fictional, and then deciding if it’s good or bad, why not decide if believing a falsity is ever good, if so determine when it’s good, and then decide if there’s a reasonable definition of religion that would fall into that set? If you’re worried about how to define religion, avoid it and address the general problem, and, should we decide that it is sometimes beneficial to believe a falsity, only then decide whether those situations or types of beliefs include anything we might want to call religion. This narrows the scope of the ultimate question from ‘what is religion’ to ‘does religion meet XYZ criteria’. Plus, if the general condition isn’t met, it’s not worth facing down all of defining religion, existence, etc. etc.

I would argue that the general condition is not met. Falsity can only produce beneficial outcomes by accident, while the truth enables people to bring about outcomes by conscious decision. When truth fails to so empower, or when the truths lead people astray, it is that they are partial truths: if I drink plant fertilizer on the belief that it makes things grow, it is the false belief that I am one of the things that it makes grow that causes the poor choice, rather than the true belief.
We should therefore seek to rid ourselves of false beliefs, even if in the past they have led to positive outcomes, and foster true beliefs, even if in the past they have been associated with negative outcomes.

And yes, of course you’re right about TCM. I should have qualified the statements much more than I did, eg “qi healing produces no discernable benefit in ridding the body of a given bacteria.”

Humegotit, I misunderstood your first post; I agree.

Great! What is it? and how do we know that it outweighs the negatives of believing a falsity?

I don’t really want to defend science at all here, but starting from the assumption that religion is false it seems as good as anything as a fill in. I wouldn’t have brought it up at all but for being asked to provide a useful definition of religion (and then of existence) in this context.

I don’t think this is a strong argument in favor of religion, given that it is false. Because people tend to cultivate falsity doesn’t seem to justify the cultivation of that falsity. People tend to get hungry if they don’t eat, does it follow that we shouldn’t eat to satisfy our hunger because we’ll just get hungry again?

Religion is a part of western culture, and the majority of people are religious. The majority tend to define ‘good’, so we should expect that people generally define religion itself as good.
Monks also tend to be extremely non-harmful, so any harm brought to them is wanton. No one would find it wrong to beat up a monk who started a fight, though they would probably find it to be wrong to beat up a child, even when the child starts the fight.

Do you mean to say that religion is not operative in people decision making schema? Are beliefs totally irrelevant? If someone gave me a vile of poison and told me it was a cure for my child’s disease, I would kill my child with the best of intentions. What’s different about a religious beliefs such that it is inconceivable that a harmful action would follow from religion, assuming religion is a false belief?

Oughtist, it sounds as though you’re saying that religion was worth it, or has been historically, because it’s gotten us this far. But given our time and our freedom, and, as I stipulated, given that religion is false, is it worth it any longer?

EDIT: coherence.

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That more proves my point than disproves it.
People largely don’t go to religion for a definitive answer, although in the west this is a large part as well, but mostly to fill a void in sensory that they feel without it.
To feed with spiritual food.

Some are simply not hungry.

Remove religion, man, collectively, will become spiritually hungry and recreate it simply because he is hungry again.

This is an extension of their belief system; therefore, a form of good is brought about from it; non-harmful passiveness.
It was a point that if we attribute things to religion, then we don’t only get the negatives, we get positives.
Just like the original example showed Hitler as an example of someone outside of religion as a negative, inside of religion we can find both the same negative and positives.
Since the negative was already on the table within religion, I pointed out an obvious positive within it.

That was all there was to this part.

The answer was in regards to the point you made about religion disagreeing with itself on many issues.
Simply put; man does not agree with every man, so man’s religion will not either.

I was not remarking on decision making.

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Hello Carleas:

— Great! What is it? and how do we know that it outweighs the negatives of believing a falsity?
O- One of the most notable features is the meaning people feel in their lives because of their religion. The sense of purpose and reduction of feeling of powerlessness are others I could mention in passing. How do we know? We do not “know”, nor can we even hope to “know”. It is not a mathematical formula. It is a belief people have or do not. These are not objects that we can put in a balance and calmly sit back and observe as one weights more than the other, tilting the scales. The value is what tilts our opinion and belief and this value is added by us onto these ideas, mental objects.
There are negatives to believing in religion, but there are also positives, but life is tragic and nothing is for free. The good that religion could offer comes alongside the possible abuses and excess it can justify and the violence and terror it fuels can also fuel the hope and meaning in the lives of millions who have nothing to hope for. Without hope, without meaning, one could find studies supporting this, one becomes more suceptible to depression and depression is not just psychologically debilitating but also physically debilitating and this decline shortens human life where all other variables are consistent. Again, I have read studies on this but I am too lazy or busy to fish for these.

— I don’t really want to defend science at all here, but starting from the assumption that religion it seems as good as anything as a fill in. I wouldn’t have brought it up at all but for being asked to provide a useful definition of religion (and then of existence) in this context.
O- I think that religions are a body of theories, ranging from the political, to the cosmological, to the moral. Originally they were this vast and because of this they proved to be the ground from which science could eventually distance itself from. Originally scientists were not apprehensive about touching on moral subjects (Kant for example), just as religious monks were not indifferent to research and scientific pursuits. These demarcations were only recently established, with science abandoning moral discussions and religion taking a defensive stance towards scientific reasearch in some cases

— I don’t think is a strong argument in favor of religion, given that it is false. Because people tend to cultivate falsity doesn’t seem to justify the cultivation of that falsity. People tend to get hungry if they don’t eat, does it follow that we shouldn’t eat to satisfy our hunger because we’ll just get hungry again?
O- It just makes little sense to ask: “Is cultivation worth it?” And you take a swepping view of religion only to find falsity, but I don’t think that religions would have been so successful over the centuries with all they did was deal in falsehood. Nor can we explain, using your narrow view, how can anyone intelligent, sometimes actual scientist, can also be religious.

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Please understand, I’m not finding anything about the truth or falsity of religion in this thread. I’m taking the falsity of religion as a given. I’m making no attempt to comment on whether religion is or is not false, but asking: if we take it to be false, how should we act towards it? It’s a hypothetical. How can anyone intelligent be religious? Maybe religions aren’t false. But that is a different discussion. Given that religion is false, is it worth it to maintain the construct for some other reason?
Your comments about its success over the centuries seem to indicate that you think that is has a practical value beyond its truth, or at least that it has at some time. If not, then the only explanation for its tendency towards success would be that it is, in fact, true.

If these people have nothing to hope for, why should they have hope? Is false hope a positive thing? This is often touted as a benefit of religion, but the benefit is dubious. If a train is coming for you, something that makes you think that you’re safe as can be isn’t beneficial, it’s clearly harmful. Similarly, a hopefulness that discourages outrage when outrage is what’s called for is probably harmful; whatever the appropriate reaction, false hope likely stifles it.

I think you reversed my metaphor: I am hungry (religious). If I eat (abandon religion), I will just get hungry again later (find some other religion). Therefore, I should not bother to eat. That seems to be the syllogism you’re constructing. I don’t deny that if we eliminated religion today, something like religion would be invented to take its place, but I don’t think it follows that it’s not worth eliminating religion. Just because people will create it again does not mean that it is a good thing. People crave all sorts of harmful things.

But that doesn’t mean that everything that everyone says is a good thing or beneficial or even acceptable. Hitler was just wrong in his belief that blond-haired blue-eyed people are above others in every respect. His error caused harm. Contradictory religious beliefs alleging statements of fact reveal that one of the two beliefs, or both, must be wrong. The beliefs disagree, just as the humans who hold them disagree, but are they equally valid just because they exhibit a common human conflict?

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I don’t see religion as a great wrong and never will.
I cannot agree with it’s removal, especially under such reasoning as considering it to be a lie, falsity, or wrong.

It would be as to say to me, remove Philosophy from man, for it is a great lie.

What I mean by this, is that taken as a given that any one religion is incapable of being the absolute truth, I don’t see that negating religion, as religions roll is not to offer all of man the absolute answer.
It’s roll is to offer a method of exercising the spirituality of man if you are a man interested in doing just so.

Just as philosophy does for the mind and logic.

It is possible for man to live without either and be perfectly fine.
This doesn’t mean that either should be wiped out simply because I may hold either as false in regards to having an absolute right answer.

This would be no different from assuming that I believe in an absolute right answer and therefore everyone should be forced to follow my religion or philosophy.

Stop concerning over who is right and wrong in religion and start concerning with what religion matters to you alone; if none, then that is your religion and peacefully go it’s way.
There is no empirically right religion as of yet, and I think it would be horrid if there ever was.

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Again, this whole discussion presupposes that religion is in fact false. Your responses seem to be based in the potential validity of religion. If we began a discussion that asked “Assuming philosophy only ever produced falsities, should we keep it?”, we might discuss practical benefits of philosophy besides the beliefs it produces, and it may be that philosophy does nothing besides produce beliefs, and it is only the value of those beliefs that puts the value to philosophy, and so if philosophy produces nothing but false beliefs, we should do our best to avoid it (even if people will naturally tend to recreate philosophy). This line of reasoning doesn’t seem appauling to me. I certainly don’t think philosophy is a great harm, but at first glance I would agree with the statements: “if all philosophies were false, then we should reject all philosophies; and if the pursuit of philosophy only produced falsities, then we should abandon the pursuit of philosophy.”
Fill in the blank: “If all religions were false, their beliefs incorrect, and their pursuits produced nothing but further falsities, then we should _________________ religion.” Or, the general form, to avoid what may be a question of defining religion: “If a statement is false, we should _____________ the belief that the statement is true.”

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Hello Carleas:

Alright, sorry about the mix-up. We shall continue as if falsehood has been demonstrated.

— If these people have nothing to hope for, why should they have hope?
O- Nothing to hope for from a materialistic perspective. For example a person might be diagnosed with a terminal deceased and told that they have two days to live according to a materialist perspective. There is no hope for a cure, no expectation of recovery and no speculation about what awaits you, or if there is even a “you” after your life runs out. By constratst, the person retains hope because from his religious perspective, God is omnipotent and nothing is outside His realm of action, if He so desired, and if He did not, then it would be, so says hope, because there is a Plan in place, a process. His death is not just bad luck, but intended, because of such and such reason, even if the reason is not apparent for us, it is that faith that religious perspective that hopes, in a hopeless situation, that our death had a reason. Further, given the inevitability of our death, in some cases, religion also speaks to the person about a new life beyond this one and all hope that they’ll see one another in a future time, in a different location, where painful separation will never happen again. (religious)Hope in a (scientifically) hopeless situation. And it is not that these people “ought” or “should” have hope…you cannot walk up to someone that does not believe and tell them: “You should have hope in God”. If you have it you have hope even in spite of what you ought to believe, or should know.

— Is false hope a positive thing?
O- As I explained earlier in relation to depression and how depression physically affects us. Doctors do not care if you get better because you found strenght in a lie but only that you found strenght somehow.

— This is often touted as a benefit of religion, but the benefit is dubious. If a train is coming for you, something that makes you think that you’re safe as can be isn’t beneficial, it’s clearly harmful.
O- only if you have the choice on the matter. If you’re going to get hit (just as you are going to die sooner or later), then I do not see it as harmful to live the rest of that life at peace with the train, either because you think that someone will stop the train or because you think that you’ll survive the train.

— Similarly, a hopefulness that discourages outrage when outrage is what’s called for is probably harmful; whatever the appropriate reaction, false hope likely stifles it.
O- the prophets, for example, expressed outrage at many social injustices while still holding on to a false doctrine. But feeling outrage about situations beyond your control will drain you emotionally…sooner of later that rage has to be channeled into something more positive, even if it is false.